In the short and troubled reign of James II. little was heard of the claims of England to the sovereignty of the sea. Bad king as James was, he rescued the navy from the deplorable condition into which it had sunk in the later years of Charles,—of which Pepys has left so graphic a picture,938—and the naval officers continued to enforce the routine duty of the flag; but the domestic troubles with which he was surrounded prevented him from turning it to account against any of his neighbours, even if he had been so inclined. And with the Revolution of 1688 the whole aspect of the question was changed. The English pretension, as we have seen, had been specially directed against the United Provinces, but when the Prince of Orange was called to the English throne as William III., and was thus the ruler in both countries, it was not to be expected that he would show much zeal in continuing the policy of the Stuarts against his own countrymen.

It is true that in the treaty which was concluded between England and the Dutch Republic in 1689, the article on the flag in the treaty of Westminster was repeated and confirmed. This, however, was very much a matter of routine and formality, though it must be said the Dutch ambassadors in London complained that William was as obstinate and punctilious about the question of the flag as any purely English sovereign could have been.939 But from this time until well on in the next century England and the United Provinces were united as allies in the great wars with France. There was thus little room for serious disputes with them about the flag, the right to the herring fishery, or the sovereignty of the sea, even if the desire had existed. Against France, however, William made use of the customary language as to the English sovereignty of the sea. In the spring of 1689, after William had been proclaimed King of England, Louis XIV. foresaw the formidable coalition that would be formed against him, and he boldly issued what was virtually a challenge to England on the subject. He published an ordinance on 15th April in which he not only prohibited his officers from giving the first salute to ships of other nations carrying flags of equal rank to their own, but ordered them to demand the salute from foreign vessels on whatever seas or coasts they might encounter them, and to compel them by force if they refused.940 That this challenge of Louis to dispute the sovereignty of the sea was not too presumptuous was shown in the following year, when the combined fleets of England and Holland were defeated by the French off Beachy Head. In the declaration of war against France, in May 1689, the ordinance of Louis was made one of the reasons for hostilities. “The right of the flag,” said William, “inherent in the crown of England, has been disputed by his orders, in violation of our sovereignty of the Narrow Seas, which in all ages has been asserted by our predecessors, and which we are resolved to maintain, for the honour of our crown and of the English nation.”941 They were strange words to come from the mouth of one who was Prince of Orange as well as King of England, but the times were changing and such phrases were soon to become merely empty forms.

With respect to this ceremony of the flag, which the English professed to regard as an acknowledgment of their sovereignty on the sea, it may be said that from this time on it ceased to have much importance in international affairs. The instructions issued by the Admiralty to the naval officers continued to be explicit enough, and they indeed suffered but little change for another century. The commander of one of his Majesty’s ships, on meeting with any ship or ships belonging to any foreign prince or state within his Majesty’s seas (which, it was explained, extended to Cape Finisterre, Van Staten not being mentioned), was to “expect” such ship or ships to strike their top-sail and take in their flag, “in acknowledgment of his Majesty’s sovereignty of those seas,” and if they refused or offered to resist, they were to be compelled to do so. Within his Majesty’s seas his Majesty’s ships were in no wise to strike to any; and in other parts only if the foreign ship struck first or at the same time, except in a foreign harbour or in a road within gunshot of a fort or castle, in which case a salute with guns was to be given if the commander of the fort agreed to answer gun for gun. If any British ship was so far forgetful of its duty as not to salute the king’s ship by striking the top-sail as it passed by, when it might be done without loss of the voyage, they were to be “brought to the Flag” to answer their contempt, or reported to the Admiralty for proceedings to be taken.942 Similar instructions were issued in succeeding reigns, the injunction to compel by force those who refused to strike being limited to flag officers and commanders.943

Disputes as to striking appear to have been much less common in the latter part of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century than they were previously, but they sometimes occurred; and the ceremony seems to have been enforced on Dutch ships, though they were allied with the English fleet at the time. At all events, the Lords of the Admiralty in 1694 wrote to the Duke of Shrewsbury saying that the instructions required the respect of the flag from all nations whatsoever, without any distinction, and that Sir Cloudesley Shovel had been advised to that effect.944 At this period, as indeed always, the Danes were very punctilious as to Kronberg Castle on the Sound being saluted with proper respect by foreign ships, and in 1694 Shrewsbury advised the Admiralty that the king had signified his pleasure that all ships of war sent to the Sound should salute Kronberg with three guns only, upon assurance that their salute would be returned by the castle with a like number of guns.945

Early in the reign of Anne, in 1704, a sanguinary encounter took place with reference to the striking of the flag that equalled if it did not surpass in brutality any case that happened under Charles. An English squadron under the command of Admiral Whestone fell in with a Swedish man-of-war convoying some merchant vessels. The Swedish commander refused to strike to the English admiral, on the ground that he had received strict injunctions not to do so to any flag whatever, even in the Channel, and thereupon the English proceeded to compel him by force. After about 150 Swedes had been killed or wounded, as well as many English, the unlucky man-of-war, with all the merchantmen, was brought into Yarmouth Roads.946 Another case of a different kind happened in 1728, early in the reign of George II. A French man-of-war, the Gironde, under the command of Mons. de Joyeux, on going into Plymouth Sound on 23rd November, was hailed by an English frigate, which demanded that he should salute the fortress and the frigate. The Frenchman replied that the bad weather had prevented his sending an officer to the governor to agree about a salute, but that he owed none to the frigate, which carried a pennant only, it being usual to salute none but flags; and he passed quickly into the port, where the captain of another frigate sent to ask him if he would not salute the commodore, who carried a bare pendant, and he returned the same answer. On coming out again on the 29th the frigate called upon him to strike his pennant, and on his refusal threatened to fire upon him. M. de Joyeux, feeling that it was by no means proper to hazard his ship under the cannon of the castle and the batteries, then complied, and also saluted the fort with eleven guns, as previously arranged. This “insult” was made the subject of complaint by France, and when all the papers had been submitted to the king he instructed that the officer responsible, Lieutenant Thomas Smith of the Gosport, should be forthwith dismissed the service as having in this particular exceeded his instructions.947

In the writings of the naval historians of last century one may find expressed the views which were then prevalent in naval circles as to the striking of the flag and the sovereignty of the sea generally. They claimed for the crown of England an exclusive propriety and dominion in the British seas, both as to the right of passage and the right of fishing, and the widest limits were assigned to those seas. Thus Burchett, who was Secretary to the Admiralty, defined them as follows in 1720: On the east they extended to the shores of Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, so as to include the North Sea; on the south they were bounded by the shores of France and Spain to Cape Finisterre, and by a line from that Cape westwards to meet the western boundary, thus comprising the Channel, the Bay of Biscay, and part of the Atlantic Ocean; on the west they extended to an imaginary line in the Atlantic in longitude 23 degrees west from London, passing from the southern boundary to latitude 63 degrees north; and on the north they were bounded by this parallel to the middle point of Van Staten. These were declared to be the British seas proper, in which the crown had the most absolute dominion and the right to the honour of the flag from all other nations; but in addition, it was stated that on the north and west as far as America and Greenland the crown had also “most ample rights” in virtue of first discovery and occupation.948

No doubt much of the claim put forward by these writers on behalf of the maritime dominion of England was stereotyped, and had more form than substance. Entick, indeed, in 1757, although asserting the right of Great Britain to an absolute sovereignty of the sea, and to the striking of the flag as an acknowledgment of it, himself described this duty as “but an indifferent honorary ceremony.” The changed point of view in which the matter was regarded was shown also in the declaration of war by Great Britain against the United Provinces in 1780, because they had joined the Armed Neutrality. It contained nothing referring either to the flag or to the sovereignty of the sea; and it was doubtless as a mere matter of form and precedent that a brief article relating to the striking of the flag was inserted among the preliminary articles of peace, drawn up at Paris in 1783, and in the definitive treaty of peace concluded with the United Provinces in the next year.949 The time was approaching when this ceremony was to pass away altogether as a symbol of our maritime sovereignty, even in the eyes of Englishmen. There was little need of claiming it as an acknowledgment of our actual naval supremacy during the greater part of the eighteenth century, for it was obvious to all the world that British sea-power was supreme. From the reign of Anne onwards the naval force of Great Britain was overwhelming, and formed a determining factor in the history of Europe. This country was undisputed mistress of the seas,—or tyrant of the seas, as our enemies preferred to put it,—and our old rival, the Netherlands, was left far behind in the race for naval power as well as in commerce.950 Nor was it longer necessary to insist on the honour of the flag in order to stimulate the valour of our seamen, to keep alive the spirit of maritime glory in the nation, or to evoke the reverence of foreign peoples. The forcing of all foreign ships to strike in the British seas became a political encumbrance unsuited to the times. It was allowed to fall into disuse when its inconvenience had long outgrown any utility it had possessed, and the battle of Trafalgar, in 1805, gave the opportunity of departing from the ancient claim. The naval power of France and Spain having been humbled, it was thought a convenient time spontaneously to abandon a pretension which “could not probably have been maintained much longer except at the cannon’s mouth.”951 The Admiralty, with the approbation of the Government, accordingly omitted the arbitrary article from their instructions for the fleet.952

In the closing years of the seventeenth century and the earlier part of the next there were many signs that the era of claiming an exclusive sovereignty over extensive regions of the sea was passing away; and that, on the other hand, the policy of fixing exact boundaries for special purposes, either by international treaties or national laws, was taking its place. Such signs may be observed in the writings of public men, as in the letter of recantation which Evelyn indited to Pepys in 1682 (see p. 514), which included a long reasoned argument against the English pretensions. Still more to the point was the appearance of an extremely able work by Sir Philip Meadows in 1689, immediately after the Revolution, in which these pretensions were subjected to the most destructive criticism.953 Meadows had considerable experience of public affairs. As Latin Secretary to Cromwell’s Council—an office to which he was appointed in 1653 in order to relieve the poet Milton, whose blindness interfered with his duties—he was conversant with the negotiations then proceeding with the Dutch; and later, as ambassador to Denmark and then to Sweden, he had opportunities of acquainting himself with the claims to maritime sovereignty put forward by those countries. The keynote of Meadows’ work was, that as the dominion of the seas was apt to become a specious pretence to a war between England and Holland, while the real causes of such a war were hidden and remote, nothing would conduce more effectually to preserve a lasting peace than a true knowledge and right understanding of the matter. If the claim of England as expounded by Selden was to be considered the proper standard of right and wrong between us and other nations, “if what was well written must be fought for too, not being to be gained but by a longer tool than a pen,” then the King of England would be cast upon this hard dilemma—either of being involved in endless and dangerous quarrels with all his neighbours abroad, or of having his honour and reputation prostituted at home, as tamely suffering “the best jewel of his crown to be ravished from it.” The English pretension, he pointed out, differed from that of Venice, inasmuch as it related not to a bay or gulf, but to a sea open on both sides which formed the passage of communication for the northern and southern nations of Europe. Persistence in the pretension would therefore result in war between the island and the Continent, as to whether the island should have the sea to herself, or whether the Continent should have a share of it with her. No nation had ever acknowledged the claim of England, which, moreover, was not enforced, because if one foreigner did violence to another, outside the King’s Chambers, but in the Channel or any part of the so-called British sea, he did not come under the jurisdiction of the King of England but under that of his own state.

While strenuously opposing the pretensions to the sovereignty of the sea, Meadows agreed with all other authors in holding that every country had an exclusive right to certain parts of the sea adjoining its coasts: the difficulty was to fix the bounds. “If there is no certain standard in nature,” he says, “whereby to ascertain the precise boundaries of that peculiar Marine Territory I am now speaking to, which belongs to every prince in right of his land, yet, by treaty and agreement, they may easily be reduced to certainty. For, as to the judgment and opinion of private persons, we cannot fetch from thence any true measure; for though they all agree unanimously that there is something due of right, yet they vary in the quantum, or how much. Therefore the surest way is to prescribe the limits of fishing betwixt neighbouring nations by contract, and not by the less certain measure of territory. For, if no bounds be fixed, how many inconveniencies, and what a licentious extravagance, may such a liberty run into?” The Dutch, he said, unless boundaries were fixed, might dredge for oysters on the coast of Essex, as they did formerly; or fish within the mouth of the Thames, or in our creeks, havens, and rivers; and it was unreasonable not to draw a distinction as to fishing between natives and aliens. Meadows therefore, foreshadowing modern practice, urged that the boundaries of exclusive fishing should be determined by treaty, and he prepared a draft article for the consideration of those concerned.954 In a later unpublished treatise he advocated much the same method of mutual agreement with France, with respect to the striking of the flag, as had been formerly proposed by Richelieu—that in our half of the Channel they should strike to us, and that in the half next France we should strike to them.955

Whether or not the writings of Meadows had any influence upon the practice, or, what is more likely, merely reflected the change in opinion that had begun, it is from about this time that we find instances of definite boundaries being fixed, usually in connection with the rights of fishery, instead of the vague claims that commonly prevailed. The first case of the kind happened indeed a few years earlier. In a treaty between James II. and Louis XIV., which was concluded in 1686, concerning the rights of trading and fishing in the British and French possessions in America, it was agreed that the subjects of each were to abstain from fishing or trading “in the havens, bays, creeks, roads, shoals or places” belonging to the other, and the liberty of innocent navigation was not to be disturbed.956 Though no definite limit was laid down in this treaty, the meaning of the terms used was well understood; they were practically the same as those used in the proclamations as to neutral waters in 1668 and 1683. They are interesting as being the first definitions of the kind which apply to the coasts of America, and they do not materially differ from the terms used in the treaty of 1818, the interpretation of which has given rise to so much dispute. Another example for a different purpose is to be found in a convention between France and Algeria in 1689, which established a limit of ten leagues along the Mediterranean coasts of France in connection with the operations of the Barbary corsairs.957

In the treaty above referred to, between Great Britain and France, the rights of trading and fishing went together. This was a very common thing in those times, particularly in remote seas, where the two pursuits were often combined, and it was especially the case in the northern seas which were supposed to be under the sway of the King of Denmark. The disputes which occurred between Denmark and the United Provinces of the Netherlands are of interest in this regard, since they reveal the methods and the stages by which a defined boundary was eventually substituted for a general claim to maritime dominion. They show, moreover, that at the end of the disputes Great Britain stood by the side of Holland in opposing the Danish pretension to mare clausum, and was altogether in favour of the free sea. It was apparently the assertion of James I. to a monopoly of the whale-fishing at Spitzbergen (see p. 181) that induced Denmark to put forward a similar pretension with regard to Greenland. As early as 1615 a Danish man-of-war demanded a contribution from Dutch whalers for liberty to fish there, and the King of Denmark complained to the States-General that their subjects were carrying on the fishery without his license and contrary to his rights. The Dutch opposed this claim and sent armed ships to the scene, which kept the Danes from active interference. A little later, in 1623, Denmark raised fresh complaints in connection with the fishing at Jan Mayen, an island discovered by the Dutch, and which, therefore, according to the charter of the Dutch Arctic Company, belonged to them. In 1639 Danish men-of-war again interfered with Dutch whalers, this time at Spitzbergen, in virtue of a decree prohibiting fishing without a license from the King of Denmark; but the firm attitude of the States-General, whose fleets were then all-powerful, cooled the ardour of the Danes. Denmark also raised difficulties in connection with the cod-fishing in the northern seas. In 1616 foreigners were prohibited from fishing either at FÆrÖe, Iceland, or on the coast of Norway, an injunction renewed in 1636 and 1639, and various limits were assigned with respect to the cod-fishing at Iceland. In 1636 the Norwegian Government declared that the exclusive right of fishing pertained to subjects within a distance of four to six Scandinavian leagues from the coast, which is equal to from sixteen to twenty-four geographical miles. The Danish claim to mare clausum also included a monopoly of trade in those remote regions, and the Hanseatic towns as well as the Dutch were forbidden to carry on traffic with the natives. But the efforts of Denmark to preserve a monopoly of fishing and trading in the Arctic seas were intermittent and ineffectual. The great Dutch Arctic Company (Noordsche Compagnie), by their charter granted in 1614, were entitled not only to the exclusive right, so far as concerned Dutchmen, “to trade and fish from the United Provinces on or to the coasts of the lands between Nova Zembla and Davis’ Strait,” including Spitzbergen, Barent’s Island, and Greenland, but also to the possession and fishery of any islands they might discover in those seas. The rights granted to this powerful company were thus directly opposed to the Danish claim to mare clausum, and owing to the preponderating naval force of the United Provinces, which was behind them, they eventually prevailed. In February 1691, after the defeat by the French of the allied British and Dutch fleets off Beachy Head and the suspension of the Dutch whale-fishing by reason of the war, King Christian V. issued another decree prohibiting whale-fishing at Greenland to all but Danish subjects; and in the following year Hamburg was forced to conclude a treaty with Denmark to enable her citizens to carry on fishing and navigation in Davis’ Strait.

It was at this time, nevertheless, that Denmark substituted a fixed limit at other parts of her dominions for her previous vague and general claim to maritime sovereignty. By a decree of 26th June 1691, the sea between the south coast of Norway and the coast of Jutland, within a straight line drawn from Cape LindesnÆs to Harboore in Rinkjobing, a distance of over a hundred geographical miles, was declared to belong to Denmark; and it was further ordained that in places where the king possessed only one of the coasts, the sea was under his dominion up to the distance at which the land was lost sight of—i.e., within the range of vision. At the end of the following year (3rd December 1692) another edict was issued declaring that no one without royal authority would be allowed to carry on whale-fishing within ten Norwegian leagues, or forty geographical miles, of the coast.958 This tendency of Denmark to formulate defined boundaries in the seas along her coasts was carried further, as we shall see, in the eighteenth century.

Within the areas above mentioned, Denmark enforced her authority with considerable vigour. In 1698 a Dutch ship was seized and confiscated for fishing at the FÆrÖes; and in the period 1738-1740 great energy was displayed in repressing violations of the Danish decrees. Several Dutch ships were fired on by Danish men-of-war for trading at Greenland; the crews were turned adrift in open boats, and the vessels taken to Copenhagen, where they were condemned as prize in the Admiralty Court. In retaliation, a Danish ship was seized at Amsterdam, and then Danish men-of-war fell upon the Dutch doggers fishing around Iceland, about a hundred in number, captured four, and dispersed the others without, it was alleged, offering to molest the British and French smacks fishing along with them. While bringing the captured doggers to Denmark, one of them managed to escape, and carried off to Holland the prize crew on board, consisting of a Danish midshipman and three seamen—an episode that recalls John Brown’s experience in 1617. These occurrences were naturally followed by diplomatic controversies. Denmark at first based her action in seizing the doggers on a decree of 1733, reserving to her own subjects the exclusive right of fishing and navigating within four leagues of the coast of all Danish possessions in the Arctic seas; and the Dutch were accused of carrying on an extensive illicit trade at Iceland, under cover of fishing. The States-General used the familiar arguments about the freedom of the seas for fishing and navigation, urged long-continued possession, and cited an old treaty of 1447 which gave the Dutch the right to navigate “usque ad BoreÆ oras.” Then Denmark placed her case on its ancient basis, declaring that the kings of Denmark and Norway had enjoyed from time immemorial the dominion of the northern seas, and were therefore entitled, even according to the teaching of Grotius, to the exclusive fishing. They denied that the Dutch had ever possessed the right of fishery in these seas, alleging that clandestine acts, punished as soon as discovered, could not be construed into possession. This revival of dominium maris called forth an energetic protest from the States-General, and affairs took a bellicose turn. Denmark sent a squadron north to maintain her claims, and Holland provided an armed convoy for her whalers and Iceland cod-smacks, “to defend themselves against the pretensions of the Danes.” Hostilities were averted by the intercession of Sweden, and of the British and French Ministers at Copenhagen, in favour of the Dutch Republic and the freedom of the seas.

Occasional disputes of the same kind occurred between Denmark and the United Provinces later in the century. In 1757 a Dutch ship was arrested—it was said in the open sea—on the ground that it had been trading in Davis’ Strait, and the matter was adjusted a few years later by an undertaking that the Dutch vessels would refrain from trading within the precincts of the Danish possessions. The States-General in 1762 issued a placard to this effect, and they also sent a ship of war to enforce it. In 1776 an English brigantine and two Dutch vessels were seized for trading at Greenland, and condemned by the Danish Admiralty Court, and although on the protests of the British and Dutch Governments the vessels were released, compensation for detention was refused.959

Other and later examples of the tendency alluded to, of fixing definite limits for the rights of the state in the seas washing its territories, may be found in the international treaties, which were concluded during the eighteenth century, concerning the rights of fishery on the coasts and islands of the British possessions in North America, a region of the world which has furnished numerous examples of agreements of the kind. One of these, in 1686, has been already mentioned. By the great treaty of Utrecht in 1713, following Marlborough’s successful campaigns on the Continent, France ceded Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Great Britain; but certain concessions were made to French fishermen, who, of course, previously enjoyed the right of fishing there, which subsequently for a long period formed a fertile source of trouble and dispute. In addition to certain privileges as to landing and drying fish, French subjects were to be free to fish in the seas, bays, and other places to thirty leagues from the south-east coast of Nova Scotia.960 Half a century later, by the treaty of Paris in 1763, at the conclusion of the seven years’ war, Canada was ceded to Great Britain, and the concessions to French fishermen at Newfoundland were confirmed, with some modifications. Liberty of fishing was also granted to them in the Gulf of St Lawrence, subject to the condition that they did “not exercise the said fishery, except at a distance of three leagues from all the coasts belonging to Great Britain, as well those of the continent as those of the islands situated in the said Gulf of St Lawrence.” On the coasts of the island of Cape Breton, outwith the Gulf, they were not to fish within fifteen leagues of the shore.961 These provisions concerning the fishery in the Gulf of St Lawrence and at Cape Breton were confirmed twenty years later by the treaty of Versailles in 1783, the article regarding Newfoundland being at the same time modified.962

In these various treaties the fisheries were dealt with in a special and exceptional manner, in connection with the cession of the adjacent territories by France to Great Britain. The French fishermen had always enjoyed the right of fishing in these seas in virtue of the ownership of the land; and though full sovereignty over the latter was acquired by Great Britain, the liberty of fishing, under certain restrictions, was continued notwithstanding the transference of territory. The fisheries of Newfoundland and Canada were of great importance. They were highly valued by France as forming nurseries of seamen for her navy, and for this reason the preliminary treaty of 1762 was severely criticised by the Opposition in the British Parliament, and especially by Pitt, who perceived that the concessions with respect to the fisheries would enable France to revive her naval power.963

A concession still more extensive, on the same principle, was granted by Great Britain to the newly-established United States of America in the treaty of 1783, by which their independence was recognised. The question of the rights of fishery was very fully discussed in the negotiations which preceded the treaty; and though Great Britain did not deny the right of American citizens to fish on the Great Banks of Newfoundland, or in the Gulf of St Lawrence, or elsewhere in the open sea, she denied their right to fish in British waters, or to land on British territory for the purpose of drying or curing their fish. A compromise was arrived at, and the treaty provided that the people of the United States should continue to enjoy, unmolested, the right to take fish of all kinds on the Newfoundland Banks, in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and at “all other places in the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish”; also on such parts of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen should use, and “on the coasts, bays, and creeks” of all other parts of the British-American dominions. They were further permitted to dry and cure their fish on unsettled parts of the coast of Nova Scotia, the Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as these parts remained unsettled.964 It will be observed that by this treaty the liberty of fishing in the territorial waters of the British possessions in America was conceded to the citizens of the United States, who had exercised the fishery before their independence was declared. They continued to enjoy the right which they had had as British subjects after they had ceased to be British subjects, and they did so until the war of 1812.

With regard to the fisheries at home, in whose interest James I. had originally raised the question of the sovereignty of the sea, the clamour against the Dutch gradually died out, or was only heard at intervals and received but scant attention. Pamphleteers continued to denounce the liberty allowed to foreigners to fish along the British coasts, and drew the usual picture of the great national advantage that would flow from the creation of native fisheries to rival those of the Dutch.965 Under James II., William, Anne, and the Georges, the policy of fostering the fisheries by protective legislation and by means of organised societies or associations was continued, with but little good result. The most serious attempt was made in the middle of the eighteenth century, when an Act was passed966 for the incorporation of “The Society of the Free British Fishery,” giving power to raise a stock of £500,000, and guaranteeing 3 per cent interest on the sum raised within eighteen months,—which amounted to £104,509,—as well as conferring various privileges and immunities, including a tonnage bounty to encourage the equipment of busses. This society, which was incorporated in the autumn of 1750, with the Prince of Wales as Governor, had a chequered career. Its headquarters were pitched at Southwold, Suffolk, where docks were built and buildings erected. In 1756 it possessed thirty busses and six “yagers” to carry the pickled herrings to Hamburg and Bremen, the masters of the busses being Dutch or Danish, and the crews chiefly from Orkney, the fishing being carried on at the Shetlands and down the coast to Yarmouth. Financial and other difficulties were encountered, some of the vessels being taken by French privateers, and all the remaining busses and effects were sold in 1772 for £6391. Half a century later, the relics of some of the discarded busses were dug out of the mud at Southwold.

The Act above referred to was the parent of many others designed to encourage the fisheries, chiefly by providing bounties; but probably more effective than such measures in stimulating the native industry was the decay which overtook the fisheries of the Dutch. This decay was no doubt due to several causes, but among the chief must be reckoned the frequent maritime wars of the eighteenth century in which the United Provinces were engaged. Their herring-busses were often captured or destroyed, sometimes in large numbers at a time, as in 1703, when a French squadron fell upon them at Shetland and burned many of them—variously stated at from 150 to 400.967 Not infrequently their herring fishery was entirely suspended, it might be for a series of years, owing to the inability of the States-General to protect the fishing vessels from the French or the British cruisers; and such interruptions told seriously upon a business which depended so largely on the export trade of the cured herrings. From these repeated blows the Dutch fisheries never recovered, and the fleets of busses gradually dwindled. In 1703, 500 of them fished at the Shetlands and southwards along the coast; half a century afterwards there were but little over 200; and in the later years of the century the number sank as low as 120, which scarcely exceeded the vessels from Denmark, Prussia (Emden), and Belgium. Thus the part of the pretension to the sovereignty of the sea which related to the fisheries along the British coasts was gradually solved, the British fisheries, now the greatest in the world, rising on the ruins of the Dutch.